17 
The President's Address. By Dr. G. T. Hudson. 
and the consequent darting to the bottom of the tube— bring into play 
a number of various muscles. These are all practised to act together 
with the utmost precision and swiftness ; and I never, except on this 
occasion, saw them act otherwise than in concert. But to have done 
so now would have been to have caused a struggle between the 
Floscule to get into its tube, and the Euplotes to get out of the 
Floscule’s grip ; in which the cup’s delicate walls might have been 
much injured. So the latter did the only thing that there was to be 
done with safety. It slowly contracted its foot while distending 
its coronal cup to the utmost ; and, making as it were a graceful curtsy, 
gave the Euplotes a free passage. 
Here, then, was an unusual danger met promptly by the reversal 
of one of a group of related actions, which habit must have made 
almost inseparable. It looked as if the Floscule had consciously 
adopted this mode of escape from its awkward position ; but, as 
Hamerton has well said, “ the impossibility of knowing the real sensa- 
tions of animals — and the sensations are the life — stands like an in- 
accessible and immovable rock right in the pathway of our studies. 
None of us can imagine the feelings of a tiger when his jaws are 
bathed in blood, and he tears the quivering flesh. The passion of the 
great flesh-eater is as completely unknown to civilised men, as the 
passion of the poet is to the tiger in the jungle. It is far more than 
merely a good appetite ; it is an intense emotion.” 
The main difficulty in conceiving the mental state of animals is, 
that the moment we think of them as human we are lost. But the 
hopeless absurdity of trying to fancy how life looks and feels to a 
Floscule, is only a trifling instance of what meets us at every turn ; 
our speculations constantly leading us to abysses in which thought 
does not so much lose itself, as expire. 
Curiosity may tempt us to peer into the darkness ; but if we 
wish 
“ To take what passes in good part, 
And keep the hiccoughs from the heart,” 
we must turn back to sunshine and our beautiful earth, existence on 
which is acceptable almost on any terms. It has delights for our 
senses, satisfaction for our affections ; and, for our minds, a store of 
marvels which the longest life can never exhaust. For the softer con- 
solations of hope, for dreams of the future, for the recovery of lost 
love, and the re-uniting of snapt heart-strings, we must step into the 
realm of Faith, clinging to our hopes, and declining “to lose ourselves 
while seeking for our primary cell.”* 
Sir Thomas Browne’s advice is as good now as it was 250 years 
ago : “ Desert not thy title to a divine particle. Have a glimpse of 
incomprehensibles, and thoughts of things, which thoughts but ten- 
derly touch.” 
Science, though it has its own religion of wonder and reverence, 
* ‘Horae Subsecivae,’ Dr. John Brown. 
1891. 
c 
